Look Who it Was Random video

Andrew Barron - High Impact Technology

256 views · Published 18 February 2016 · 3:53 · Indexed 12 November 2026

Channel: Science, Technology & the Future · 2016 · Science & Technology

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What technologies will have high impact in the future?
See transcription: http://www.scifuture.org/high-impact-technologies-with-andrew-barron/

Andrew Barron: I think what we are seeing at the moment - and we are seeing it quite rapidly - is the fusion of the biological sciences and the information sciences period - so it goes beyond AI.
We're seeing a capacity to manipulate and rewrite genomes - again we are actually need an involvement of an AI to do that properly - but we really are truly seeing a fusion of the biological and information sciences which is opening absolutely transformative technologies - that we probably can't quite properly predict or name currently - but I imagine that the future would see explosive growth in this area and the emergence disciplines that we can't even imagine currently.
Yep.. exactly... exactly - so new capacities to manipulate genomes - and equally we are getting much smarter about the risks of that and much more careful with that - but we are realizing also that the genome itself is highly self-organized and massively data-heavy - and yet this fusion of biology and information sciences is liberating entirely new disciplines - and it's happening at such a pace.  I mean, just in terms of my life as a scientist - we've gone from - when I was at school we were told that the human genome was impossible - informatically impossible - there would never be enough computing power in the world to sequence the human genome.  Now we're sequencing genomes for just over $1000 very very quickly and easily - our challenge now is to be intelligent in what to do with that data.
What's interesting about the iPhone is not the technology itself - it's the way that it has changed human behaviour.  So we've suddenly adapted very very very rapidly to a carryable device that enables us to have immediate communication / immediate access to databases and reference libraries - and their capacity to store endless amounts of images if we choose to do so - and we've adapted to that seamlessly - to a point when people feel lost and panic if their phone is broken or is taken away from them.  That's the more interesting interesting impact of the iPhone - and I think what that says is that we're going to see humans adapt very quickly easily to other forms of wearable or insert-able technologies - I think we've shown by the iPhone example that we have a capacity embrace that kind of change - if it offers convenience and ease and improves our connectivity and quality of life.
In terms of technology though I think that the biggest strides will come from biological - there is research that fuses biology and technology - I think that we are on the cusp of that - the more interesting technological changes will come not through simple technology - but by an understanding of how our brains work - by understanding the human brain.  If we can actually crack that and then interface that with technology - that will get completely transformative technological solutions.
So in the far future could we see humans being a mixture of technology and organic solutions - and would be basically see a re-imagining of humanity - in a far future?  Again I see no reason why not in a far future.

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